since 1871

Title: my fleeing heart (aka: this ain’t your mama’s greek alphabet)Fandom: AvengersRating: NC-17Word Count: 15,500Pairing: Clint/Coulson, Clint/Thor/Steve, Clint/OMCsContent Advisory: Non-con, dub-con, underage, biteplay (and accompanying incidental bloodplay), D/s, self-lubrication in men. Referenced: incest, gangbangs, bondage. PM me if you need any more information about the warnings! :-)Notes: Oh, man. So, like, this is a universe/structure that (I think) came out of werewolf fic in Supernatural fandom. It’s basically an excuse for biological D/s and bestial, pheromones-made-them-do-it sex. How it works (in my version, there are many different takes on it) is that Alphas are tops, Betas are normal (and make up the vast majority of the population), and Omegas are submissives. Every so often Omegas go into heat, which is similar to what cats go through (IDEK), and they want to have lots of sex. This is as much about Clint’s backstory as it is about the porn. So it's kind of...angst-sex? Angsex? You know what I mean. Thanks: Many thanks to arsenicjade, who is amazing. ♥

Summary: Clint’s heats have never been easy. This one is especially bad.

*

It starts as a distraction. A slight ache in his groin. Nothing serious, maybe an overworked muscle from sparring with Natasha yesterday. He slips on his oldest, softest clothes (a pair of sweats and a flannel shirt he’d stolen from Coulson years ago, before they were anything more than friends).

He wanders into the kitchen and makes himself hot chocolate and French toast for breakfast. He makes too much batter because he’s used to cooking for Coulson, but, since he’s gone, Clint leaves the extra pieces on a plate and puts a note on them marking them for Bruce, who sometimes forgets to eat. After breakfast Clint settles on the couch in the living room to watc TV. The cushions are soft under him, luxurious in the way that all of Tony’s belongings are, and Clint likes the way it cradles him.

That night, he gets into bed, grabs some lotion, and tries to jerk off. Slides his slick hand over his cock, the sheets rucked up around his feet, the lights off, Coulson’s pillow under his head. It takes him a few minutes before he realizes what’s happening. His cock’s hard, but it’s not what’s aching. Every time he rolls his hips up, his hole clenches, sending pulsing waves of pleasure through his hips.

Fuck.

His cycle isn’t supposed to hit for another six days. He doesn’t have any preparations in place—Phil’s gone, and Clint’s suppressors (expensive contraband) are at SHIELD headquarters with the rest of his mission gear.

He bites his lip and slips his other hand between his thighs, pressing his fingertips against his hole. It’s wet already. He shoves two fingers into himself and gets himself off as quickly as he can; it won’t be long before there won’t be anything he can do.

As soon as he comes, he makes himself get up and go to the bathroom. He takes a shower and scrubs his skin until it hurts. He changes the sheets, shoving the soiled ones into the closet. He knows that the others are going to have to put up with his stench for the next couple of days, but he doesn’t have to make it worse for them.

He’s tense again by the time he’s done cleaning, his cock growing hard, but he forces himself to sleep. He curls around Phil’s pillow and tries not to think about what he knows is coming.

*

It’s not supposed to hurt like this. For most Omegas, it doesn’t.

Clint had been nine when he went through his first heat. A bit young, but not out of the normal range. He’d been in the orphanage then, and was the only Omega they’d ever had. There was no family there to draw him aside, to teach him about his body, to tell him that what he felt was normal and that there were things he could do to satisfy himself until the day when he would—hopefully—find an Alpha who would claim him or a Beta who could take care of him.

They locked him in a spare room so that he wouldn’t get molested by the other children, gave him a few bottles of water and some prepackaged food, a bucket to use in place of a toilet, and then they locked the door.

He thought that he was being punished. That he’d done something wrong, that he’d fucked up and they were teaching him a lesson. When his body started to go through the changes—his hole clenching, dripping with clear, slick fluid, his cock perpetually hard, his skin oversensitive, his muscles tense and shaky—he thought that he was dying. He thought he would die there, in that little room, because of something he’d done wrong.

His body was too immature to translate the signals his body was giving him as pleasure, too stupid to interpret them as a craving for contact, and gave him pain. For the five days he was locked him in the dark, he didn’t touch his cock, didn’t touch his hole. He hallucinated. After five days, when they opened the door and found him, filthy and starving and terrified, he had been shocked to realize that he was still alive.

Every four months, they’d drag him, begging and screaming, to the small room. He’d lose his mind, tear at his skin with his fingernails, bite his hands and forearms bloody, and slam his body against the walls until he couldn’t move. Not until the circus did he learn that his heat had anything to do with sex.

*

He knows that this is going to be a bad one. His last three heats have been…irregular, to say the least. Eight months ago, the world had been blue and cold and his heart had not belonged to him. He’d felt everything, felt every itch and burn and discomfort, his mind had processed and catalogued every sensation—and ignored them. It had been unbearable. Loki had not ordered him to scream, and so he stayed silent, his mind awash in a storm of stimuli.

Four months ago, they had not yet told him that Coulson was alive. He’d locked himself in the apartment that he shared with Coulson—there were boxes still unpacked, precious few things had been used enough to retain Coulson’s scent—and taken every second of suffering as a welcome change, a physical manifestation of his emotions.

(Twelve months ago, Coulson had been there.)

If Clint was better, if he was normal, he’d be able to get through this without Coulson. He’d take something that smelled like Coulson, grab a couple of toys, and distract himself until it ended or his Alpha came to tend to him. That’s what any other claimed Omega would do.

But Clint’s twisted. All the things that make him an Omega have been used to hurt him. All the things that his body does to ready him for mating, for breeding, simply cause him pain.

He wishes that Coulson could be here now, in bed with him, his cock filling Clint, his voice calming him, Coulson’s hands driving him crazy. But Coulson’s on a mission with no opportunities for communication, and Clint is not pathetic; he will get himself through this alone. He’s done it before. It’ll be harder, since it’s been so long since he’s had a heat with any real release, but that’s no excuse.

He spends the night dreaming about Coulson and wakes up with come pooling on his stomach and a soaked mattress. He cleans it up as much as he can, changes the bed to their last set of clean sheets (which smell like detergent and not Coulson), and takes another shower. He tries, and fails, to jerk off. His cock’s hard, but his cunt—his hole, goddamnit, Coulson hasn’t ever called it a cunt; Clint shouldn’t use other Alphas’ words for it—is swollen and tender.

Not for the first time, he kicks himself for ever agreeing to move into the Avengers tower. He needs to get food and water, to stock up the way they’d taught him to at the orphanage. This wouldn’t have been a problem in his old apartment. Hell, he doesn’t have any supplies here—hoarding food is a childhood habit that he’s trying to break.

It’s getting hard to think. If he doesn’t leave the room now to pick up food, he won’t be able to make himself leave again until after the heat’s faded. Coulson would be unhappy if he came back and found Clint too worn out for missions.

His hand shakes on the doorknob. He smells. He knows he does. His hole’s been dripping steadily for almost a day now, it’s still leaking down his thighs. Preparing him for Coulson. He’s taken three showers already today, as many as he could stand before the water on his skin and the lights in the bathroom had grown unbearable.

He prays that no one else will be up yet. He doesn’t need to give them any more evidence that he’s weaker than his teammates are. Not only is Clint just a human, not only is he an Omega—needy and weak—but he’s a fucked-up Omega. He has precious few things to be proud of. When he’s like this, he can barely even use his bow. He’s useless.

It makes it harder that the rest of the team are so content with their lot.Thor and Jane are one of the happiest Alpha/Beta pairings Clint’s ever seen. Bruce and Natasha are well-balanced Betas who generally chose to have short relationships with other Betas, and Steve and Tony had driven everyone mad until Tony’s heat had hit. They’d emerged from Tony’s quarters at the end of the week, their scents indistinguishable. Tony as an Omega is everything that Clint isn’t. He’s connected to his body—to the pleasure it can give him—in a way that Clint simply isn’t capable of being. Tony’s heats don’t incapacitate him. Don’t make him a liability in the way that they do for Clint.

He makes it to the kitchen before anyone scents him. Because his luck is fucked, Steve shows up right when Clint finally manages to pull the fridge open.

“Hey, Barton. How—” Steve’s face crinkles and he sniffs the room. “Clint, are you…are you…you know?” Steve waves vaguely in the air, trying to politely ask if Clint’s becoming a slave to his biology.

“Sorry,” Clint says, eyeing the bottles of water in the fridge. He could still take one, right? Take it and then leave?

“Don’t apologize, just—what are you doing out here? Like that?”

“Getting water,” Clint says, letting his hand snake out to grab the bottle. It’s so cold that it almost hurts his hand. He clutches it to his chest.

“Good. It’s good that you have water,” Steve says, talking to him very calmly. Clint can feel himself flushing with shame. Steve shouldn’t be treating Clint like this; that kindness and care belong to Tony.

“Just gonna go back to bed,” Clint manages to say, even though he knows he shouldn’t go yet. He needs more food, more water, needs to apologize for the scent of his hunger which has nothing to do with sustenance and is going to end up permeating the entire apartment if he doesn’t get himself under control soon.

“Why am I horny?” Tony asks, barging into the room. “Oh, shit. Well, that explains it.” Clint manages a weak grin. Tony takes a sniff, just like Steve had done, but Tony understands it better than Steve had. “What’s wrong with you?”

Clint feels a new ache spread through him; it feels uncomfortably like jealousy. The last time that Tony had been through heat, no one had seen him, because Steve had taken care of him, emerging periodically to get food and water, a huge grin on his face. (Pathetically, pointlessly, Clint wishes Coulson was here now, to bring him bottles of water that wouldn’t be too cold, to feed him soup, to satisfy the many cravings of his weak body.)

Clint has only had one heat that left him better than he was at the start. He doesn’t remember a lot of it. All of his memories of it are distorted, like something he saw through thick-paned glass. He remembers Coulson touching him. He remembers that it had felt good. Once, one time in his life, Clint had been happy to be an Omega.

“Sorry,” he says again, edging towards the door. “I just need, I’m gonna go back to bed, but I can—if there’s a call, I have suppressors. You won’t be able to smell me, so, I can still work.”

“That’s…really not what I was asking,” Tony says. Clint is thirsty now, but he can’t take his attention away from Steve—who’s standing tall and strong, frowning, Alpha—for long enough to open the water bottle. Too many scents and sounds are passing through the room; he doesn’t understand what’s going on.

“Where’s Coulson?” Steve asks.

Something inside of Clint cringes. Steve sounds authoritative. Clint wants to roll over and show his belly. “He’s—he’s on a mission,” Clint says, biting his lip to keep himself from adding ‘sir.’ That is a title he reserves for Coulson.

“How long will it take for him to get back?”

“The mission—the expected completion date is…” He tries to focus on what Coulson had told him, what he’d seen on his calendar. “The end of the month, I think. They’re in Texas.”

“Have you called him?”

“Of course not,” Clint whispers. Coulson’s work is important.

“Of—of course not—” Steve sounds angry. Clint bites his lip and whimpers as some fluid leaks out of his hole. Years ago his body learned to connect fear with the expectation of penetration. Someone’s mad at him, he’s going to get fucked; it’ll be better for him if there’s enough lube to ease the way.

He tries to convince his body that it’s capable of walking out of the room, but it doesn’t work.

This is what he hates the most. That his body—which is, every other day, his best weapon—can be torn so completely out of his control. Clint closes his eyes and lets his body fold to the floor, his shoulders resting against the right angle of the kitchen counters, the floor cold underneath him.

He can hear the others talking, Natasha’s voice in the mix now. He hopes they’ll let him return to his room, hopes that, if he keeps himself from jerking off, they won’t be able to smell him. Maybe there, he’ll be far enough away to keep from being a disruption.

If one of them could just help him to his room, or if they’d leave so that he could crawl there—because he could manage to crawl there, he thinks, he just doesn’t want to have to live with the humiliation of it if they saw him doing it—then he’d be okay. If his scent’s too strong, he can stay in the fucking shower for five days; if he’s too loud, he can gag himself again, he’ll do whatever it takes, he just—

“Please don’t kick me out,” he whispers, flinching when the conversation around him stops. “Please, I’ll—I’ll do anything.” He will. He’ll let them fuck him, let them tie him up to watch him beg, he’ll do anything, as long as they don’t get rid of him.

One time, in the worst of the years between the circus and SHIELD, he’d shacked up with an Alpha who’d let him sleep in her bed. Viewed him as an equal. They lived together for weeks, cooking and dating and fucking. Then his heat hit, and she treated him like the bitch he was. Locked him up in a cage, his legs spread and bound, his hole available for the taking. She made him beg the men and women who came to visit, and he had. He begged them to fuck him, and, once he was desperate to the point of delirium, they obliged him. Once they finished with him, he licked them clean and thanked them for the privilege. She hadn’t understood, when the heat ended, why he was mad at her. He was an Omega; he was her property. He’d stayed with her for three more weeks before leaving.

He doesn’t want the people he loves to treat him like that again. He would stay, if they did, but it would make it harder.

“I’m going to take you into the living room,” Natasha says. Slowly, he opens his eyes. The room’s empty except for the two of them and Banner, who’s standing in the doorway, his eyes averted. The two Betas, least likely to be affected by him or to affect him in turn.

“What’s going to happen in the living room?” he asks.

She holds her hand out to him but he struggles to his feet on his own. He’ll get embarrassingly clingy if anyone touches him. “You’re going to sit on the couch and Tony’s going to clean your room for you so that you can stay in bed while you wait for Coulson.”

“Coulson’s in Texas,” he tells her, wavering on his feet but steadying himself on the counter.

“He’s flying back. If you’d told us when your heat started, he could have gotten here sooner, but no, you had to be stubborn, had to convince everyone that you could push through it.”

“I did okay last time,” he says. The walk between the kitchen and the couch is unexpectedly daunting, but he forces himself to walk. One foot in front of the other. With every step, his hole aches, and fluid drips down his thighs. By the time he gets to the couch he feels so empty that he wants to beg Natasha to fuck him. Fist him, maybe, if there aren’t any dildos nearby.

“Locking yourself in Coulson’s apartment to starve to death in a corner like a sick animal does not count as ‘okay.’”

He lets himself press his palm over his cock to distract himself from the pain between his legs. His hole pulses and he whines as wetness spreads, soaking the pair of flannel pants he’d snagged from Coulson’s drawer.

“You’re fine,” Natasha says. “Almost there. Come on.”

He can’t bring himself to pull his hand away. He falls onto the couch and curls on his side, pressing his face into the couch cushion, muffling his shuddering breath. He rocks his hips against his hand, an ugly echo of the motion he actually craves.

“What do you need?”

“Coulson,” he says, before he remembers that he can’t have that, shouldn’t need it. “Shower,” he says. “Clean—clean myself off, won’t smell like this, won’t be so…bad.”

“No one cares how you smell, and Coulson’s on his way. Clint—what do you need right now?”

“Don’t know,” he mutters, scrunching himself smaller into the couch.

“Clint,” Steve says, stepping into the living room, his voice strong, the way it is on missions or when Tony’s acting up, “tell me what you need.”

Without thinking about it, his body reacting without his permission, Clint rolls onto his back and spreads his thighs. The scent of him, sharp and sweet and pungent, rolls out into the room. He jolts against the cushions once, twice, before he manages to get himself back under control.

Steve’s gone, he realizes, when he comes back to himself. “Fuck, sorry, I don’t—” He struggles, trying to get off the couch, to get on his knees and apologize to Steve, to Tony, for being so out of control and needy. Then Natasha’s there, grabbing his hands and pulling him in tight against her body. She smells familiar, she feels strong, so he lets her presence envelop him.

“Steve didn’t mean for that to happen,” she says quickly. “He was trying to get you to answer his question, not to take advantage of you. We need to know what you need, okay? They’re all very worried about you.” He hates that he’s causing them all so much trouble. If they’d just let him go back to his room, leave him there with some food, he’d be fine. “Are you tired?” she asks. He lifts his head from her shoulder and shakes it no. “Hungry?” He might be, he can’t tell. He shrugs. “Thirsty?” He is, actually. Very.

He licks his lips and tries to figure out how to ask for water. None of the people in this room are his Alpha, so there’s no reason for them to help him. What does he have to offer them in return? There’s only one thing, really, that he’s good for now.

He kisses Natasha’s neck, savoring the skin under his lips, the salty taste of it bursting on his tongue. After a second, she pushes him away. He stretches after her, trying to please her, but he recoils when he realizes what he’s doing. Offering his submission to Steve, throwing himself at Natasha—his team is never going to be able to look at him again. God, maybe they won’t even want to keep him around—what’s Tony going to say, when he learns that Clint had spread for Steve without Steve even touching him?

“Please,” he says, “please, leave me alone.”

Natasha leaving physically hurts him, but when the room is finally empty—no scents competing with the memory of Coulson’s, no signals confusing Clint’s instincts with his judgment—he can finally relax a little. He eyes the ceiling vent, but knows he wouldn’t be able to make it up there.

There’s nowhere for him to run, there’s no way for him to get himself under control. He’s miserable now and it’s only going to get worse. If he tries to jerk off, it will just leave him more unsatisfied. He’ll build toward orgasm, build and build and build and find himself on the brink, waiting for an Alpha to give him permission to go over. He doesn’t know how to pleasure himself, when he’s like this. That knowledge, those opportunities, had been denied him.

*

Once they’d gotten to the circus, Clint learned that the people at orphanage had actually been kind to him. When Barney broke them out and talked their way into a berth with the circus, he didn’t tell anyone that his little brother was an Omega. Clint’s scent had always been weak; most people just assumed he was a subdued Beta.

A month into their stay, Clint went into heat, and most of the unattached Alphas in the circus had helped him through it. The circus was home to a lot of people who didn’t fit in with the rest of society. Some of them were just different, quirky and fun and crazy. More of them were dangerous to the people around them.

They took him under the big tent and gave him what he asked for. They fucked him for five days, locking him in the horse stalls during performances. A few of them let him come, made sure he got water, but more of them just wanted to try him out.

He came out of it with bite marks, bruises, a distrust of Alphas, and a hatred for his own body.

Maybe, Clint thought at the time, maybe Barney hadn’t known. Hadn’t thought to warn Clint or the others, hadn’t thought to secure Clint a safe place for the duration of his heat.

In his second heat after the orphanage—which had taken him by surprise, too stupid to figure out the rhythm of his cycles or the warning signs, leaving him vulnerable again—Barney had been among the Alphas who obeyed Clint’s pleas to be taken.

No one questioned the brothers’ place in the circus after that, and no one but the Swordsman paid attention to Clint except for those five days every four months. Unclaimed Omegas were a rare and precious commodity, as usually their family or a potential mate would shield them until maturity, and Clint being on offer was enough to secure their place.

He spent four years with the circus. He left when he was fifteen.

*

They send Tony in to talk to him next, which is a smart move. Nothing in Tony’s scent (except for the faint signals marking him as Steve’s) could trigger more arousal in Clint. Tony sits next to where Clint is curled on the couch and knocks their ankles together. Clint shudders at the contact. It feels so good. He squirms backwards into Tony’s grasp, and Tony raises his arm to let Clint settle against his side. The arc reactor’s pressing against Clint’s shoulder. Clint’s thighs are clenched tight so that he won’t overwhelm them both with his stench.

“JARVIS can’t figure out what’s happening with your physiology. Your pheromone output is abnormal, your metabolism keeps fluctuating—” Clint tries to pull himself away from Tony’s side, but Tony keeps him tucked there. “JARVIS doesn’t know what to do to help you, so I need for you to tell me.”

If there’s anyone who would understand, it would be Tony, who had gone through most of his heats unclaimed. “It hurts,” he says, one hand creeping between his legs to press against the soaked fabric. “I want—I need—someone has to fuck me,” he whispers, because there is an emptiness in his body that is wrong, like drawing his bow with no arrow in his hands; incomplete.

“Don’t you have toys?” Tony asks. “You’ve got to have a dildo squirreled away somewhere, in one of your little nests; now is not the time to get shy. Hell, you can borrow some of mine, okay?”

“I can’t,” Clint growls, because if it was that simple, he’d have managed it on his own. “It doesn’t…it doesn’t feel good.” It’s not pleasurable, it’s not a diversion, it’s a biological imperative that he can’t fulfill without an Alpha. Coulson isn’t here, and Clint will not betray him. “Can you help me back to my room now?”

“Sure.”

Tony pretty much carries him, his face pinched, his nostrils flaring. They’re going to have to get the carpets cleaned, when Clint comes out of this; he’s dripping on the floor.

The bed has clean sheets, but they’d left the pillowcases unchanged. Tony helps ease him onto the mattress, sitting up against the headboard. Clint props Coulson’s pillow against his side and tries not to cry. He’s not entirely successful.

Tony stays with him, talking to him quietly about upgrades he’s planning and meetings he doesn’t want to attend, petting his hair, for hours.

“I’ve got him again,” Natasha says, bursting into the room. She’s got a phone in her hand, and, when she presses it into his hands, he can hear—oh, thank god.

“Clint?” Coulson sounds calm, but concerned. There’s something loud in the background—sounds like he’s at an airstrip.

“Sir?”

“Hey,” Coulson says. Clint relaxes. He’s spent countless missions with Phil’s voice in his ear, giving him orders and intel, telling him when it’s safe to come home. “I’m on my way back.” Clint can’t hold in the sob of relief that works its way through him. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there days ago. Your time with Loki and my absence must have thrown off your cycle; I should have realized that was a possibility.”

“No, don’t—”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses right now,” Coulson says. Clint shuts his mouth. There are times when the balance of power between them doesn’t matter, but this is not one of those times. “Are there others in the room?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you had anything to drink yet today?”

“No, sir.”

“Ask one of them for some water. You know how important it is for you to stay hydrated.”

As if on cue, a bit of wetness trickles out of Clint’s cunt. He turns to Natasha, the phone still clutched to his ear. “May I—may I please have some water?” She nods and leaves. He shudders and relaxes against the headboard. When he’s like this he has a hard time figuring out which signals from his body he should ignore and which ones to obey.

“Good boy,” Coulson says. Clint moans, his whole body tuned to his Alpha’s approval. “Now I want you to tell me what you’ve done in your heats before that have helped make them more bearable. I’ll be there soon, as soon as I can, but I don’t want you to hurt.”

“If I could have something to fill me,” he whispers, turning away from Tony. “Not to…I won’t come, until you get here, but if I could—could just—” The muscles of his cunt are practically screaming at him, trying to clench around something that isn’t there; the pain is quickly starting to consume him.

“Would your fingers be enough?”

“No,” he says, feeling absolutely miserable.

“Could you ask Tony or Natasha if they have something you could use?” He stays silent. He still has some dignity left; shame still has some effect on him. “Clint,” Coulson says, his voice like the snap of a whip, making Clint’s entire body arch in response. “Tell me.”

“It has to be an Alpha,” he says, hearing his voice, cracked and rough, speaking not just to Coulson, but aloud in his room, in his room with Natasha and Tony, in his room in the Avengers tower, where he’d wanted so desperately to belong. “Can’t manage it alone, can’t make myself. Please, I promise, I’ve tried.”

“I give you permission,” Coulson says, “to ask Steve or Thor—or both—to help you through this. But I need you to be honest with me right now,” he says. Clint nods, forgetting that Coulson’s not there to see him (wanting it, wanting Coulson, bad enough that it’s making him stupid). “I give you permission to seek help from one of the others, but, if that’s going to end up making you feel worse, I will forbid it. I can’t make this decision for you. I need you to tell me what will make you feel better, not what you think will make me happy.”

Hearing Coulson’s voice has worked Clint’s body up to a frenzy. If Coulson’s going to offer him a way out, make allowances for Clint’s weakness, Clint will have to take it. “Order me to,” Clint whispers, which is as much of a ‘yes’ as he’s capable of right now.

“Tony is going to see what he can do. I have to go soon, and I won’t be able to talk to you while I’m in flight. Hopefully, one of the others will be able to help you. I give you permission to seek help from whoever you want, and I’m ordering you to tell them to stop if you need them to stop. They’ll listen to you, Clint. If you can come, I want you to; if you can’t, I’ll help you when I get there. I’m on my way home,” Coulson says.

“Promise?”

“Promise. I love you,” Coulson says, which is the most valuable promise that anyone has ever made to Clint, and one of very few that have not yet been broken. “I’ve got to go now. If you need anything, you ask for it. That’s an order.”

“Yes sir,” he says.

Natasha takes the phone from him when the line goes dead. She sets it on the bedside table, showing him that it’s still on, that it’ll ring if Coulson calls again.

When Tony comes back into the room, both Steve and Thor are with him. Natasha puts her hands on either side of Clint’s face and forces him to look at her. “Do you want me and Tony to leave you alone with them?”

“Yes,” he groans, because the Alphas’ pheromones are overwhelming him, and he needs.

“One of them, or both of them?”

“Both,” he says, because he thinks he will be safer that way, if they know that the actions they take against him won’t be entirely private (and because some screwed-up slutty part of him wants to get fucked, hard, for as long as he can bear it).

Clint doesn’t know much about his biology, about the reasons why his body obeys and hurts the way it does. He’d asked Bruce to explain it to him once. Bruce’s explanation hadn’t made any sense. Admittedly, Clint failed the last science class he tried to take (and that had been middle school), but there were other things that confused him. Bruce had talked about nonhierarchical structures and emotional bonding, something about mutually beneficial partnerships that Clint kind of remembers learning about during his preliminary combat classes, but that make no sense when applied to real life.

Banner’s a Beta, so Clint figures he must not really understand. Clint does know that when he’s in heat and an Alpha is around, they are all he can smell, all he can see, all he wants. Now he’s in a room with two Alphas, on his back on the bed, his legs pressed tight together, slick pulsing out of him with every twitch of his eager hips.

He’s been like this before too many times to count. Helpless and overwhelmed and outnumbered. Doesn’t matter who they are, or what he knows they’ll do to him. He learned to hate his traitor body a long time ago (and that lesson, that one, had stuck).

*

There are four ways that Clint has tried to get through his heats.

The first is to find an Alpha to spend the five days with him. Usually someone he met at a bar (he tried, once, going with somebody he knew at work, but they’d tried to carry over the relationship once they’d left the bedroom, and Clint hadn’t been okay with that). His pheromones would take over, overwhelming the pain and his own reluctance. When he was being fucked, he forgot about anything else.

Once, Clint had picked up an Alpha at a bar and gone back to her place instead of to a hotel (where there would be questions and intervention if the noise got too loud or too many people started streaming through the bedroom). She’s the one who had taken him on dates and made him dinner and then tied him up in her living room and thrown a party. On the fourth day of his heat she’d set him up on a fucking machine and left to go to work, two webcams pointed at him; one at his face and one at his hole. That’s the last time he went anywhere except for the clubs.

There’s at least one club in every major city where Omegas who are too ugly or old or mean will go to get gangbanged for five days straight. The proportion of Omegas to Alphas in the general population is about two-hundred to one, so demand is high. Tony’s the first Omega friend Clint’s ever had (although maybe Clint’s not the best sample, as he can count the friends he’s had and has on both hands with fingers to spare). At most clubs, there are Betas who run the joint and make sure that the Omegas aren’t irreparably harmed.

Clint’s met two other Omegas like him at different clubs. Clint usually draws big crowds when he shows up, and these women had similarly been the center of attention.

The biggest thing that tied the three of them together and set them apart from the rest of the Omegas was their scent. Unlike most Omegas, they don’t stop broadcasting their pheromones once an Alpha starts fucking them. Instead, the scent just gets worse, gets stronger. Their receptors don’t work right. All three of them had learned, when they were too young to heal, that they should not trust Alphas, that they could not trust their own bodies.

The first woman he met was in the center of her own circle at a small Midwestern club. She’d practically growled at him to warn him off of the territory she’d claimed, the Alphas she’d found to satisfy her. She’d been in the last day of her heat, and her body had been—well. Clint had seen his own body in the mirror before, when he drags himself home at the end of his five days, covered in come and bruises, gaunt and wrecked, but it was an unpleasant shock to see that look in someone else.

He ran into the second woman when he was older, old enough that he’d stopped crossing his fingers when he walked into the club hoping that he’d end up okay. He was in San Diego, in a club with huge altars set around the room, like they were celebrating something sacred instead of fucking. There were beds on most of them, but the one in the center was bare of furniture. There were too many people on it for furniture to be practical.

When Clint first saw her, she was on her back being fucked by three men at once. She pushed them all away—an assertion of authority that Clint had never seen in an Omega in heat before—and beckoned Clint to her.

She kissed him while they tore his clothes off and then pulled him on top of her, his cock sliding into her as everything started up again. She had a strong accent that rendered her words almost unintelligible, and Clint was quickly losing his ability to comprehend speech, but some of it had sunk it, some of it he remembers. She murmured her broken English into his ear, telling him how much it hurt, how soon it would be over, that she thought he was sweet. Soon she wasn’t saying anything because they were each taking dick at both ends.

When the Alphas pulled them apart—bringing Clint to an altar of his own—she laughed. It had taken Clint another few years before he got the joke. (They were the joke.)

If there were no clubs in town, or if he was too worried about running into someone he know (or if he just couldn’t handle being handled by that many people at once), he’d lock himself in somewhere and let his body tear itself apart. Hardest part was finding space. Usually, basements of abandoned buildings, closets where he could rig locks from the inside that were too complicated for him to undo during his heat.

Now that he’s grown, his body isn’t as confused during heats as it had been when he’d first been taught this coping mechanism, but he’s stronger now, better fed and more muscular. The damage he’s capable of inflicting upon himself has grown along with his strength. It’s more dangerous now. His body is more mature, but there are new barriers between Clint and pleasure, new reasons why the best answer he can come up with to satisfy his body’s demands is pain.

The last time he’d tried to isolate himself, he’d broken his own arm (he doesn’t remember how, just remembers coming back to consciousness in so much pain that he’d prayed to pass out again). He’s not going to risk an injury that would interfere with his job, so he stays with the clubs, where the damage isn’t as extensive.

Isolation is how most Omegas who don’t have a trusted Alpha companion spend their heats. They don’t usually lock themselves in like Clint does, since they’re strong enough to remember that they can take care of themselves. They’ll bring some toys—something that carries their Alpha’s scent, if they’re bonded and only temporarily separated—and they’ll pleasure themselves until the need passes. Clint had tried that once. Had started fucking himself gently with a vibrator, and ended up making himself bleed. He had wanted so desperately to orgasm, but without the trigger of an Alpha’s pheromones, he’d been unable. He’d come out of that heat feeling unsatisfied, insane, and unbearably sad. He’d come out of it still wanting.

Option four is suppressors. They’re illegal, expensive, and dangerous. Clint’s taken them twice. The first time he’d been fresh out of the circus. He’d traded a quick fuck for a full dose, and had settled in at a rundown motel to get through it. It had been, hands down, the worst experience of his life.

The second time he was on a mission, and the choice was suppressors or failing the mission, failing Natasha, failing Coulson. It was hard to track down a dose in a foreign country where he didn’t speak the language, but he managed with twelve hours to spare.

He waited to take the dose until he was settled in his nest. He tied his bow to his hand to keep from dropping it when the shakes got too bad. He claimed equipment failure to explain why he couldn’t talk (his teeth were chattering and he’d bitten through a good chunk of his tongue). When Coulson’s order came through, Now, he took the shot with the scent of vomit, sweat, and piss overwhelming him (but no pheromones to give him away), blood dripping down his chin and from his nose, a constant internal monologue of screaming almost beating out the sound of Coulson’s quiet voice. He made the shot, burned his nest, and went off the grid for two days.

He’d gone back to the safehouse ten pounds lighter, only to find a new black mark on his record, right alongside another commendation.

That’s when Natasha began to suspect what was really wrong with him. Four months later, she betrayed him.

*

The two men with him now aren’t strangers, aren’t men he picked up at clubs or two faces among a large crowd. He values Thor and Steve as friends more than he needs them as Alphas (he won’t let his body ruin this for him, too), so he forces himself to focus for a little bit longer.

“This is okay, right?” he asks. “Because if you don’t want to be here, you can leave. I’ll manage, I swear, I’ve done this before. Coulson’s just—” Clint loses a bit of time, as the memory of Coulson’s voice (I love you) washes over him “—he’s overprotective.” Coulson doesn’t want him to suffer, which, okay, it’s a nice thought, but it’s a bit pointless, when it comes to Clint. “I don’t…I don’t want to fuck this up.”

“We’re sure,” Steve says.

Clint nods, whispers, “Thank you,” and rolls over onto his hands and knees. It’ll give them the best leverage, and they won’t have to look him in the face. “Whenever you’re ready,” he says, bracing himself as best he can against the headboard.

“Clint—what are you doing?” Steve asks.

Clint looks down at himself, to make sure he’s in the correct position, and realizes that he hasn’t taken his fucking clothes off. “Heat makes me stupid sometimes,” he mutters, fighting down a blush. He pulls the shirt over the head and mentally curses himself out. The clothes are Coulson’s, they smell like him, he should have taken them off as soon as Steve and Thor came in the room.

Thor stops him, grabbing his wrists and pulling them away from where Clint had been tugging off his pants. Clint goes limp in his grip. Finally, finally, someone is going to fuck him. “Slow down,” Thor says.

Clint whimpers in frustration and fear. He doesn’t want this to be slow. He wants them to fuck him and leave, he doesn’t want them to drag this out. “Please,” he whispers. “Can we get this over with?”

He can’t decipher the look that Steve and Thor exchange; he hopes it’s not about something that will hurt him. “If that is what you wish,” Thor says, “then that is the service we will provide. We wish to make this as pleasurable for you as possible.”

Clint looks back and forth between them, waiting for them to make the next move. “I don’t understand,” he says, when neither of them push him back into position. Thor lets go of his wrists and Clint pulls his hands into his lap, pressing on his cock, trying to fight back the urges that are distracting him. He has to stay coherent enough to figure out what Thor and Steve want from him.

“If you need this to be rough and…and faceless,” Steve says, “then we’ll try to do that. If that’s what you need. We’re here to help you,” he says. “Just until Coulson gets back.”

Clint doesn’t know what to do. This isn’t a situation he’s familiar with. “You’re not supposed to be nice to me,” he says, not sure if it’s the pheromones or his general ignorance that’s confusing him. “You’re Tony’s Alpha, you have to be nice to him.”

“That’s…that’s not a courtesy given exclusively to your bonded,” Steve says slowly.

“No, I know,” Clint says, because he knows a lot of people have sex that isn’t painful. “Just—you don’t have to be nice to me.” He’s asking enough from them already; he’s not going to make them suffer through this for any longer than they have to.

Clint’s entire body throbs, and he clamps down on the urge to go to his knees. He needs these men to fuck him. But if they want to draw it out, if they want to humiliate him and expose him while they do so, he’ll let them.

Thor sits down on the edge of the mattress, one leg bent underneath him and the other braced on the floor. It’s driven home to Clint again how big Thor is, how strong; how pointless it would be if Clint decided to fight back. “It’s been a long time since I was with an Omega,” Thor murmurs, looking at Clint but not really seeing him. Then Thor grabs a hold of Clint’s hair and pulls his head back, exposing his neck, and Clint gasps, arching into his grip. “It is my pleasure to serve you.”

Steve joins them, sitting on Clint’s other side. Clint whines as his body tries to turn to and yield to both of them at once.

“Limits?” Steve asks.

“What?” Clint gasps. He’s having a hard time hearing again, a hard time thinking.

“What do you not want us to do? Or—are there any things that you really want?”

If Coulson had not ordered him to be honest, he would have said Nothing to both questions. “Don’t want you to leave me,” he says, the humiliation sending a jolt of arousal through his fucked-up body. “I do—I want—I need something in me,” he confesses, because that pain is spreading through him more and more with every breath. With both Alphas so close to him, his body doesn’t understand that he hasn’t earned it yet.

Then Steve’s slipping Coulson’s sweatpants over Clint’s hips, lifting his body off the bed effortlessly. Thor lets go of his grip on Clint’s hair to let Steve work, and Clint twists his body to try and get Thor to touch him again. Before he can even process how exposed he is, Steve slides two fingers into his cunt.

Oh. Oh. His thighs clench around Steve’s hand and his stomach tenses, his body convulsing, so greedy and grateful. Steve’s fingers are long, hot even against Clint’s flushed skin. Steve’s already got them all the way in him, his thumb pressing against Clint’s perineum. Clint gasps and tries to adjust.

He hadn’t been expecting them to be kind, to give him what he wants so quickly. Wasn’t expecting them to do anything other than stick their cocks in his ass. He feels guilty and wishes Coulson were still on the phone so that Clint could apologize for the way his body is welcoming Steve’s touch.

“Good boy,” Steve murmurs, rocking his fingers in and out of Clint’s body, moving with Clint’s unsteady attempts to fuck himself harder on Steve’s hand. “Yes,” Steve says, “just like that. Take what you want.” Clint blinks at him, confused, and tentatively lifts his hips up before pushing himself back so that Steve’s fingers are fully inside him again. “Just like that,” Steve says again, and Clint obeys, his eyes never leaving Steve’s face.

When Steve doesn’t reprimand him, Clint even dares to move his hips at a different angle so that Steve’s fingers will brush against his prostate. He flinches, expecting to be punished for focusing on his own pleasure instead of waiting for orders.

“He’s so wet,” Steve says, talking to Thor as if Clint wasn’t even there.

Clint whimpers. He knows he’s wet, knows how his body can ask and ask and ask for more; he is more used to denying it than he is to his need being satisfied. “Please,” he gasps.

“You want more,” Steve says with a grin; he’s used to dealing with Tony, he must be familiar with greed. He settles into a more comfortable position on the bed beside Clint. Steve pushes one of Clint’s legs up so that his bent knee is practically brushing against his nipple. It leaves him open, gives Steve more room to work, and Clint would thank him for adding another finger to the width he’s already granted Clint, but right as Steve slides his third finger in, Thor kisses him.

Clint fumbles in his attempt to respond. His hole is clenching around Steve’s fingers, as if he could draw Steve in further, deeper, if he just tries hard enough. He has to think for a moment before he opens his mouth under the pressure of Thor’s lips. He has to tell himself to let Thor take the lead, because in this Clint’s body has as little idea of what to do as his brain. There is no instinct to tell him that he wants Thor to fuck his mouth with his tongue the same way Steve’s doing to his hole, nothing to warn him that when Thor chuckles at his eager attempts to respond his cunt will let out a spurt of fluid onto Steve’s hand.

“Whatever you’re doing,” Steve says, twisting his hand from side to side, “keep doing it. He just squirted all over my wrist.” Clint tries to pull his leg down from where Steve’s got it pinned, tries to keep his thighs closed, because he can stop himself from doing that if they’ll just let him pull himself together.

“No,” Steve says—but he doesn’t say it as an order, just as a reminder. “Stay still.”

Clint tries to obey, tries to leave himself open and ugly the way Steve wants, but when Thor runs his free hand across Clint’s chest, his thumb brushing against Clint’s nipple, Clint jolts in Steve’s grip. Thor rubs it again experimentally, and Clint whimpers. His nipples are sensitive, practically wired to his dick, and—when he is lucky, when he is having sex for pleasure, when he wants his partners—he loves having them played with. But his reactions are completely involuntarily. Someone bites his nipples, licks or sucks or pinches them for long enough, and he’ll get hard. He doesn’t know how to convince someone that he doesn’t want it, that he’s not enjoying himself, if his body keeps proving otherwise.

“Oh, that’s—that’s beautiful,” Steve says, leaning over Clint’s body, keeping Clint’s thighs spread apart even as he takes his fingers away from Clint’s hole (which hurts) so that he can latch onto one of Clint’s nipples with his mouth. Thor’s pinching his right nipple with fingers that are big and strong and rough and Steve’s teasing the other with his tongue. Clint feels dizzy, overwhelmed, but he manages to thrust his chest up farther to encourage them to keep going.

His cock’s probably dripping now; he can feel something that feels like an orgasm building between his legs but it’s not in his cunt. His hole feels empty, unbelievably empty, as if some part of him is missing. He squirms in their grip.

“We’re neglecting him,” Thor replies, his hand moving to the crook of Clint’s other knee, spreading him open. Clint groans, his oversensitive opening exposed to the cool air of the room. “Would it satisfy you if I pleasured you with my mouth?” Want surges through Clint; when he tries to move his hips, to thrust them forward, he can’t; the men holding him down are impossibly, terrifyingly strong.

“Yes,” he gasps, trying to move again just to reassure himself that he is being held down, “if you want to, yes, please, I would like that.”

Thor rearranges him breathtakingly fast, lifting Clint’s legs over his shoulders. Steve lies down by his side, one of his hands playing with Clint’s nipples. Both of the other men are fully dressed; Clint feels out of place, like more of a chore than ever. Then Thor licks his cunt and all thought flies out of his head. Thor’s tongue flickers over his hole, lapping at the fluid that’s smeared over his inner thighs.

Clint’s hands flutter uselessly, hovering over his cock before he remembers he’s not been given permission to touch, brushing over Thor’s hair before he remembers that Thor is Jane’s, not his, and finally settling over his own mouth when Thor’s broad hands spread Clint’s cheeks open. Thor buries his face between Clint’s thighs, his beard an unexpected burn, his tongue fucking Clint’s hole like he wants to make Clint come just from that. Clint swears and writhes on the bed, grunting and moaning. He’s never felt anything like this before. The strength and breadth of Thor’s tongue feels indescribably good against Clint’s skin.

“You are so beautiful,” Steve whispers. Clint decides that he doesn’t mind if Steve’s going to pretend that Clint is Tony. “So strong, so responsive. Coulson is a lucky man.” Clint opens his eyes and blinks at Steve, because, no, Coulson’s fucking stuck with Clint, tied to him by an unbreakable, involuntary bond. Steve’s biased, having Tony for an Omega; he doesn’t know what Coulson has to put up with in Clint.

“You are a feast, my friend,” Thor says, pulling back to look at the line of Clint’s body, which is arching towards his mouth, straining for more pleasure.

Thor smiles at him before going back down on him, sucking his hole like he wants to drink Clint dry, forcing the fluids that Clint tries so hard to withhold out of his body. Thor chuckles and Clint’s body arches, the vibrations sending a shockwave through him.

“Relax,” Steve says, stroking Clint’s hair. “Are you letting him in?” Clint is being honest, so he shakes his head. He’s trembling with tension at this point. “Relax,” Steve says again. “Let us make you feel good.”

Thor keeps licking him, his tongue as strong as his hands, murmuring something every so often, probably because of the way the sound makes Clint’s entire body shudder. Steve moves back to Clint’s nipples, sucking hard on them, making the skin oversensitive, pinching at whichever nipple is left exposed.

Thor spends a few minutes teasing him, lathing his tongue over Clint’s entrance but not dipping in, over and over again until Clint screams with frustration. He covers his mouth to keep the noise contained, and moans against his palm when Thor finally slides his tongue inside of him again. Steve pulls Clint’s hands away from his face, not letting Clint keep his pitiful whimpers private.

“No hiding,” Steve murmurs, pinning Clint’s arms above his head and kissing the tense line of his bicep. Clint strains against Steve’s grip—fighting him involuntarily, instinctively—until Steve squeezes his hand, grinding Clint’s wrists together, and kisses Clint’s neck gently. His body goes lax in response to the show of strength, and Steve smiles at him. Clint feels something uncomfortably like pride well up inside of him for a second. He is—he is pretty sure that he is doing what Steve wants him to be doing.

Thor rims him and Steve plays with his nipples like they’re fucking dials, working him up into a frenzy and then kissing him while he calms down. Clint doesn’t know how much time passes, but when Thor and Steve finally pull back, the sheets are soaked underneath him.

“I don’t mean to boast,” Thor says carefully, “but it is…not typical for my partners not to reach a climax, by this point.”

Clint bites his tongue to hold back the string of incomprehensible apologies that he wants to let out. He takes a deep breath, almost choking on the pheromones in the air, before he lets himself reply. “It’s my fault,” he says. “I won’t come, I almost never do. You don’t have to worry about it.”

Steve frowns at him. Thor lets go of Clint’s hips, letting his body lie flat on the bed, before lying down beside him. Thor’s erection presses against Clint’s hip and Clint tenses. He sneaks a look at Steve, and, yes, the man’s khakis are tented over his cock. Clint hadn’t…he hadn’t thought that the other men were enjoying themselves. If they were turned on, why weren’t they fucking him?

“It is my intention for you to find release,” Thor says. “But I don’t wish to wrest an orgasm from you if it would be a defeat, rather than a gift.”

“We want to make you feel good,” Steve adds. “Can we make you come?”

Clint closes his eyes and feels like he’s freefalling, which he’s only done a couple of times, but which had left its mark on him nonetheless; there are few things that he hates worse than not having gravity orienting him towards the sky. He doesn’t know where to run, can’t tell where his escape routes are.

He has to think. Has to answer the question an Alpha posed to him. Can they make him come? He has to try and make sense of his foggy memories of the heat he spent with Phil, when he’d come until his body was wrecked and dry; has to remember the heat he’d spent with the Alpha who had hooked him up to fucking machines and left him screaming; remember the times he’d taken E or Viagra in an attempt to enjoy himself. The way his body works during heat is different from how it is outside of these isolated episodes, not that it matters; his store of consensual sexual activities isn’t exactly plentiful.

There had been—there had been one heat where Clint had gone to a club, and there’d been another male Omega there about his age (an undamaged Omega, who’d been there for fun, who hadn’t understood Clint’s desperation). They’d ended up putting on a show, the two of them writhing on the floor, fighting to see who could make the other come first. Winner got fed and fucked. Loser got strung up on a St. Andrew’s cross and flogged. Clint still has a few of the scars.

“If you suck me,” he mumbles, averting his gaze, “I might come.” He doesn’t know why he’s suggesting this to two Alphas, to his teammates. He reminds himself that just because he’s a slut doesn’t mean he has to be shameless about it.

Before he can apologize, Steve leans over and licks a stripe up his cock. Clint practically jackknifes off the bed. Thor plants a hand on his chest, another on his hip, and holds him down effortlessly. Clint babbles something incoherent and puts his hands on Steve’s head before he remembers himself and clutches onto handfuls of the sheet instead.

Steve hums around Clint’s cock and the vibrations go straight through Clint’s body, playing him like a tightly strung bow. Steve’s mouth is wet, his tongue is—Jesus Christ, his tongue is as strong as Thor’s, only Steve’s less careful with his strength, practically scraping the underside of Clint’s dick before pulling off to flick at the tip. Clint whines and spreads his legs wide, bends his head back to expose his neck. He can’t remember yielding this willingly to anyone except to Coulson.

Thor moves his hand from Clint’s chest to his neck, wrapping his fingers around it, nudging Clint’s chin further up. “You are not used to kindness, are you,” Thor says, sounding ancient and sad, the way he had when he’d learned what prisons were for, why animal shelters existed, when Coulson had explained to him what the monument to the unknown soldier represented.

“Stop fighting,” Thor says, tightening his grip briefly, so that Clint has a second to feel the muscles and tendons in his neck strain against Thor’s hand. Clint had tried to lift Thor’s hammer once; he knows how much power Thor is still holding back. “Stop fighting.”

Clint sucks in a deep breath and Thor kisses him until his air is gone again. He’s just managed a second scant inhale when Steve deep throats him, and he loses it all in a scream. “Don’t fight this,” Thor says, his voice gentle even though his hands are like metal bars holding Clint down. “You deserve this.”

Steve pulls off with an obscene pop and fondles Clint’s balls, his fingers clever and gentle. “You’re going to come for me, as soon as you can,” he says calmly, the same way he talks when Clint’s got a bow in his hand and a window of opportunity that’s narrowing. Steve knows Clint’s capabilities, his limits, his—

Steve knows him. “Yes, sir,” Clint whispers, meeting Steve’s eyes for a split second before Thor moves his hand to stroke down Clint’s chest. He can still feel the phantom collar of Thor’s fingers.

“Good boy,” Steve says, the quirk at the edge of his mouth growing into a wide grin when Clint’s cock twitches at the praise.

Steve goes down on him again, thrusting his fingers into Clint’s hole at the same time. You can do this, Clint tells himself, muscles clenching uselessly under Thor’s restraining hands. He doesn’t know what Steve’s doing with his fingers but he knows it’s making him wet, dripping down his skin, probably down Steve’s forearm; Clint gags at his own scent.

*

The Swordsman had taught him how filthy he was. Had dipped his fingers into Clint’s greedy hole and made him suck the fluid off, fingered him until he squirted and made him lick the mess off the floor.

If the Swordsman had been an Alpha, Clint thinks, his life probably would have been simpler. But instead, Clint had been the property of a Beta with a chip on his shoulder who had used his hands, his cock, and every vaguely phallic object he could find to try and fuck Clint into bonding with him. If Clint could have submitted to him, bonded with him, he would have.

Clint learned before the Swordsman did that it wasn’t ever going to happen. He’d been willing, but not able. At the time, he’d assumed it was his own fault. Figured that his body or mind was too stupid to do what they were supposed to.

After his third heat with the Swordsman (which Clint had spent begging, vomiting, and hallucinating), Clint decided that maybe what the man was doing to him wasn’t justified. Maybe the Swordsman thought Clint was able to learn, thought that he could teach Clint how to submit, but Clint knew he was too dumb to get it right, and it wasn’t fair for the Swordsman to punish him for that. He’d fought, from that point on, withholding his orgasms and his submission, choking on the Swordsman’s cock and his own juices and trying not to plead.

He taught himself how to hold back, and never met anyone—until Coulson—who made him regret that he’d never learned to give.

*

“I can’t come like this,” he confesses, when the humiliation of not being able to respond to their attention appropriately grows too strong. It’s not fair for them to keep trying if he’s not going to make any progress. He’s trembling now. Even though he’s burning on the inside, his skin feels cold and tight, goosebumps rising on his flesh. “I’m so sorry.”

Thor lays Clint down and leans across his body, supporting himself with a hand on the side of Clint’s head. “No apologies here,” he says. They go back to what they were doing earlier, Thor’s mouth and hands on Clint’s chest, Steve’s fingers slow and steady inside of him.

Thor and Steve are far enough gone that they’re viewing Clint as something valuable, territory to lay claim to. Something upsets the balance and before Clint can think the two of them are snarling at each other over Clint’s body.

Clint stays absolutely still, trying not to breathe, trying to figure out if Nat would have enough time to save him if he called out to JARVIS, or if the two Alphas would tear him apart before she got there. He doesn’t want her to risk getting hurt.

Before he has time to make a decision, before his scent has been completely swamped with fear, Steve yields.

“I think he has more in common with your last Omega than with mine,” Steve says, brushing a hand over Clint’s chest in a way that’s almost…almost like it’s meant to be calming. “I’ll let you take the lead on this one.”

Thor bristles, realizing that Steve—by ceding his power to Thor in such a way—made the assumption that Thor needed his permission. When Clint opens his eyes again (he’s not safer in the dark, but sometimes it’s better not to know what’s coming) Thor’s leaning over him. Thor draws a line across Clint’s throat with his thumb, then wraps his hand around it, a loose collar that covers the skin that Coulson will bite when he arrives.

“There is no need for fear,” Thor says, squeezing Clint’s neck gently before letting go. Clint nods, not sure if his agreement is needed, but offering it anyway. “We are here to serve you, not ourselves.” Clint nods quickly; this is an illusion he is happy to prolong. “May we continue?”

“Please.”

“If it would not be too invasive,” Thor says, frowning at Clint with an endearing look of concentration on his face, “I would…” Thor’s glance drifts down Clint’s body, and he slides three fingers into Clint’s hole. Clint writhes against him, his jaw snapping shut, his desire overwhelming him. “I would have you. Is that permissible?”

“Please,” Clint says again. He doesn’t understand the game that Thor is playing, but he’s doing his best to keep up.

Thor kisses him again before he lies down on his back. He and Steve move in concert, pulling Clint on top of Thor. Clint drips all over Thor’s thighs as Steve helps him spread his legs wide enough to straddle Thor’s body.

“You’ve been wanting this for hours,” Steve says, whispering into Clint’s ear before nibbling on it, “and you’ve been so good that we’re going to give it to you. We can both smell it on you, you know. The rest of them can too, even if it’s not meant for them.”

Clint whimpers and Thor’s hands lift him up until he’s stretched out, his knees barely touching the bed, Thor’s cock sliding against the curve of his ass.

“Tell me what you want,” Thor murmurs. “Tell me what your body is asking for.” Clint chokes on air and bends his head forward. He wants to get fucked, get filled, be taken and used until he can’t think of anything else, wants them to flay the flesh from his bones and kiss him until he can’t breathe.

He shakes, Steve’s hands holding him steady, his juices leaking down Thor’s cock, preparing them all. “Breed me,” he says, his voice strange and broken and honest. That is why he is so hungry, that is why he is so responsive, that is what his defective body has been asking for. That is the ugly, primal truth at the heart of the twisted rituals that have ruled Clint’s life; and, like most of his truths, it is very, very simple. “Please breed me.”

As a reward for his reply, Thor presses the head of his cock against Clint’s hole.

Clint loses track of time after that. He knows that he begs, knows that Steve kisses him to calm him down, knows that both of the Alphas play with his nipples until even the hint of friction against them makes his hole ripple around Thor’s cock. Thor feels enormous inside of him. Clint’s body doesn’t feel empty anymore, he doesn’t need in quite the same way; every time his core clenches, Thor fucks him harder.

“You’re so beautiful,” Steve says, his hand moving steadily up and down Clint’s cock which makes Clint lose his breath again. Clint isn’t going to say anything, isn’t going to complain or ask, but it would be—it would be easier if Steve stopped talking. “You’re amazing,” Steve says, like Clint’s some modern invention, or a Monet, or Tony in a brilliant mood—something worthy of Steve’s awe.

“I can’t believe we get to see you like this,” Steve says, his hand twisting around Clint’s cock. There are a lot of reasons for Clint to lose track of what’s happening, so many excuses for why he doesn’t understand what Steve’s doing. “You’re such a good Omega. Just look at him,” Steve says, his hand caressing Clint’s face to tilt him at a better angle for Thor to see Clint’s flushed cheeks and the tears dripping down them. Clint closes his eyes, trying to remove himself from the moment since he can’t hide his body from their view.

Clint’s not hearing Thor in English anymore. Thor’s voice is rhythmic, lyrical; he sounds like he’s reciting one of the odes that he breaks out sometimes, when they’re unwinding with a few beers after a hard mission, only now every so often Clint hears his own name. He can’t understand the rest of the words but he knows that something that Thor is saying (something that maybe wouldn’t make sense in words, something that resists translation) is exposing him, redescribing him, admiring him. Clint feels almost powerful when Thor smiles at him, even with the giant hand-shaped bruises growing on Clint’s hips.

Thor’s hands are a warrior’s hands but Thor isn’t handling Clint like a tool or a weapon; Clint doesn’t understand him. He feels precious, valued, he feels like he’s doing something right and they are rewarding him for it.

Steve gets behind Clint on the bed, supporting his sagging weight, and wraps his arms around Clint’s body to start stroking his cock and playing with his nipples. Clint wraps his hands around Steve’s wrists, grateful to have something to hold onto.

Then Steve kisses Clint’s neck—right underneath his ear—and a stuttering scream forces its way out of Clint’s body. He feels an orgasm start to shudder through him, like his body is a bass drum that’s been hit too hard. He’s out of control, bucking against Steve’s mouth and Thor’s grip, his focus jolting from the bruises forming around his hips to the firm strokes of Steve’s hand on his cock to Steve’s teeth marking his neck, and, finally, to Thor’s smile.

They are both so focused on Clint’s pleasure that it scares him.

His hole squirts as Steve scrapes his teeth over the tender skin of his neck. Thor laughs, the way he does at the end of a triumphant battle, and slams Clint’s body down on his cock like he’s weightless, like he’s Mjolnir. Clint comes, comes so hard that it’s painful, relief morphing to tension and then into pain, singing along his nerve endings.

He reaches his climax with a scream and blacks out to the sound of Thor and Steve praising him.

It hurts.

*

Natasha was the first person who found out what he was and didn’t hurt him.

The last time he woke up feeling this well-fucked and ashamed, it had been to Natasha hovering over him. He was expecting to see the owner of the club, maybe with a handful of cash, hopefully with a bottle of water and a towel—but instead, there was Natasha.

She said good morning to him in Russian and called him little bird, which she usually reserved for when they were both close to blackout drunk or bleeding to death. He took a quick physical inventory, but, other than some overextended muscles, bruising, and a bone deep weariness, he was fine. He was just as he’d expected to be. He was disgusting.

“How much did you see?” he asked, the words more painful that they should have been, even with his throat already scraped raw.

Natasha pulled one of her firearms and pointed it behind her without looking. “I did what he should have done,” she told Clint. “I kept your…‘customers’ in line.” Clint looked down at himself, and, yes, he was much cleaner than expected, there were fewer bite marks, less semen. “I will take you home now,” she said, again in Russian, putting the safety back on her gun before holstering it.

Josiah looked pissed, but that wasn’t Clint’s problem anymore. He knew he’d be leaving town once he gathered his belongings from his quarters; it wouldn’t be hard to get settled in a new town and find another club within four months.

For some reason the task seemed unaccountably daunting.

He nodded and let Natasha pull him up off the ground and get dressed. He didn’t apologize or thank her; she didn’t say anything.

There was a cab waiting at the curb. He half-expected to see Coulson in the backseat, but it was just them and the driver who took them to Natasha’s small civilian apartment instead of SHIELD headquarters.

She dragged him upstairs, pushed him onto the couch, and then yelled at him in Russian so loud and fast that he only caught every third word (and then only because they’d been held captive in Israel for two weeks once and had traded every obscenity either of them knew in any language to keep themselves occupied). Her voice was hoarse and Clint was numb by the time she was finished.

“I didn’t want to keep secrets from you,” he said, his words inadequate to fill the space after the storm that hers had been. “I never wanted you to find out.” He would have kept this close to his breast until either the job or his body killed him. He’d been happy, over these past two years, with Coulson and Natasha at his side. As his friends. “I’m really going to miss you.”

“You are so stupid.” He nodded, but stopped when she slapped him. “I love you,” she said, and he turned to look at her so fast he practically gave himself whiplash. “I’ll love you no matter what you are or what you do. I love you even though you have the self-preservation instincts of a kicked puppy.”

He hadn’t believed her then. He didn’t believe her for four months. When his next heat hit, Natasha appeared in Clint’s civilian apartment—which he’d just gotten, and which held nothing except bottles of water, field rations, and manacles—locked the door behind her, pulled out a book, and settled in to wait.

“You here for the show?” he asked.

“I’m here to help.”

After that, well—it was hard not to trust someone who’d held him down and forced water down his throat, rubbed his back and hummed nursery rhymes while he retched, unfastened the restraints he’d put on himself when it was all over and his hands were too shaky to work the keys.

Four months after that she went with him back to the club and stayed by his side the entire time. The humiliation that he felt (she could smell him, hear him beg, watch him submit) paled in comparison to the safety that he felt when she ran her fingers through his hair to calm him down.

They were on a mission three and a half months later, a long-term assignment that Clint had no intention of jeopardizing. Natasha went behind his back and told Coulson, who ordered them both out of the field.

*

Clint didn’t get on the helicopter that was supposed to take them home. He stole two cars, hailed three taxis, took one greyhound bus, and ended up in Philadelphia, walking into a club that he never thought he’d go back to.

The owner, Sheila, remembered him. Offered him fifteen percent of the cover fee that they charged at the door. Clint accepted and stripped in the Sheila’s office before she took him out to the floor. They still had the same St. Andrew’s cross that they’d strung him up on last time. She tied him up and walked away.

The patrons whipped him until the wooden beams and the floor between his spread legs were covered with sweat, blood, and his own come. He licked it up and said Thank you without being prompted.

He said yes to everything and asked for more.

He wasn’t punishing himself. It simply hurt less to do this than to think about what was happening in the rest of his life.

Sheila let him recover in her office after it was all over. That was where Coulson found him. Lying on someone else’s couch, naked except for a ratty towel around his waist, semen crusted on his body and in his hair, his own juices dried on his stomach and thighs.

Clint laughed, looking at Coulson’s neat suit and impassive expression. This is how he’d always imagined Coulson would find out; Clint fucked-up and wasted, his shame physical and obvious. He hadn’t thought that it would be Natasha reporting him for the good of the mission.

“I had suppressors with me,” he said, unable not to defend himself in the face of Coulson’s disapproval. “I could have worked through it.”

Coulson knelt in front of the couch and reached out—his hand clean, his nails neat and trimmed, his movements slow and even—and cupped Clint’s chin in his hand. He brushed the pad of his thumb over Clint’s bottom lip.

Clint’s heat had passed, he didn’t even have enough energy left to stand, but the touch of Coulson’s skin against his skin made him shudder, made his cock twitch. He parted his lips and whimpered when Coulson slid the tip of his thumb inside Clint’s mouth, over the ridge of his teeth.

“You are mine,” Coulson said, and for the first time Clint truly understood that Coulson was an Alpha. “You are my asset, you are my agent, and you are my friend.” Clint opened his mouth to talk and Coulson’s grip on his chin tightened painfully. “I am very careful with my property,” Coulson said. Coulson with his impeccable suits and perfect paperwork and calm, quiet voice. “This will not happen again.”

*

Thor and Steve take turns fucking him until Coulson gets home. His nipples are bruised and raw, his cock is sensitive to the touch, his hole has been worked enough that Thor had fit almost his entire hand inside of him. He’s come three times and laughed twice.

When they get word that Coulson’s plane has landed, Natasha hustles Clint into the shower and Tony and Bruce clean the room as much as they can. She ignores him while he freaks out, washing his hair for him and stopping him from scrubbing his skin raw. Thor and Steve are gone by the time Clint gets out of the shower. He’s glad; he doesn’t know whether he’d thank them or apologize to them or kiss them.

Natasha ducks out of the room to make sure nothing delays Coulson any longer, and Clint stays wrapped in his towel, shivering in the warm room, staring at the door.

When Coulson finally arrives, he’s out of breath. His jacket’s off, his tie is loose, and he opens the door so quickly that it bangs against the wall. Reflexively, Clint checks the rest of the room for a threat, something to justify Coulson’s urgency; then he realizes that it’s just him. “Sir—”

“You’re okay? You’re okay, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he says, being honest.

Sometimes Clint forgets that Coulson’s had field training. Coulson moves almost as fast as Natasha, slamming into Clint’s body, holding him so tightly that it hurts. When Coulson finally releases him, he pushes Clint against the wall, the towel dropping to the floor. The cool surface feels almost painful against Clint’s heated skin; he hisses and arches forward. “You smell like them,” Coulson says. Clint bites back a sob and tries to drop to his knees; Coulson holds him up.

“I’m so sorry,” Clint whispers, his hands clutching Coulson’s shirt before he realizes that he’s getting his own scent, and that of the other Alphas, onto Phil’s belongings. “If I shower again, will you stay?”

“We don’t have to do anything,” Clint says, “I can just—I’ll wait, or you can send them back in, or…”

“You are not allowed to apologize, and you are not allowed to shower. You’re perfect just the way you are right now.” Clint’s face wrinkles; he doesn’t like it when Coulson lies to him. “I can’t believe you weren’t going to call me,” Coulson says, his hands running down Clint’s sides and back up, over and over, like he’s reassuring himself that Clint is solid.

“You were working,” Clint says, defending himself. “I could have managed, I will next time.”

Coulson grabs his shoulders and slams him against the wall. Clint’s cock jumps and a shiver runs through him. “Never. You will never spend another heat without me unless it’s out of our control, and, if it is, you will do exactly what you did this time. You will ask for help.”

“But sir—”

“No more talking. Not until I’m finished. You smell like them,” Coulson says, his nose brushing against the curve of Clint’s neck, his breath teasing against flesh that craves the bite of his teeth. “And I am so proud of you for letting them have you.” Clint lets out a small, surprised sound. He had been expecting Coulson to beat him, to spit on him, to leave him. He hadn’t expected this.

“Look at you,” Coulson says, letting go of Clint enough to look over his torso. “You’re going to be covered in marks for weeks. I’m going to add my own,” Coulson says, his eyes on Clint’s swollen nipples, “but I like that you’ll have something to remember this by.”

“They mean that you obeyed me. That you sought help when you needed it and that your teammates were here to support you. You needed help, and someone helped you,” Coulson says again. “I, for one, am incalculably grateful for them. Now. Do you need anything?”

Clint exhales, letting go of some tension that’s been wound tight inside of him for days, and leans forward. Coulson opens his mouth, lets Clint in. Phil puts his hand on the back of Clint’s head, letting him know he’s welcome to keep going. Clint can—and has—kissed Coulson until their lips were too tired to continue. Today he wants something else. “Would you like to…” He glances down at himself, unsure how to offer Coulson something that Clint’s pretty sure he doesn’t want. “I’d like it if you fucked me,” he says. Coulson likes it when Clint asks for things. It makes Clint nervous. He feels like Coulson must be able to see through him, to see how Thor and Steve had already played with him, how he’d called Steve Sir and meant it.

“There is nothing I’d like more,” Coulson says. He kisses Clint one last time, for a long held breath.

“On the bed, on your back,” Coulson says quietly, undoing his tie the rest of the way while Clint scrambles onto the fresh sheets. “Spread your legs. Bend your knees. Feet flat on the bed, I want to be able to see you.”

Clint wants to protest. His hole is too exposed, his wet skin too cold. He bites his lip and watches his Alpha, trying to signal his distress without words. Coulson moves to the side of the bed and places a pillow beneath Clint’s head, supporting his neck, so that when Coulson moves back to the foot of the bed Clint is comfortably looking right at him.

Coulson puts his hands on his hips and watches Clint stroke himself, watches him blush and flinch and whine. When Clint says please, Coulson shakes his head and tells him to start playing with his hole.

He does, wondering if this, now, if this is the punishment.

But there’s something in the humiliating exposure that he understands. Even though his body is burning, even though he feels more naked than he thought was possible, his entire focus is on Coulson. There is nothing for Clint to think about, nothing for him to do, except wait for Coulson. He watches Coulson’s eyes travel from Clint’s groin to his neck to his eyes and back again. Coulson’s fingers flex on his hips, shifting the fabric of his shirt and slacks.

“Who do you belong to?” Coulson asks, his voice calm and mild.

Clint’s body jolts, and there’s a new wetness on his hand, on his wrist. “You,” he pants, fucking himself harder.

“Are you sore?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. This is going to hurt,” Phil says, reaching for his belt buckle. Clint’s cunt gushes again, just at the sight of Phil’s fingers on the metal, pulling the leather strap. He whines in disappointment when Coulson drops it on the floor. “I’ll use that on you later,” Coulson says. “If you’re very, very good.” Clint nods quickly. Coulson’s unbuttoning his slacks. His cock is hard, pressing against the fabric; it’s unusual for the lines of his clothing not to be perfect. Clint’s perversely proud that he messed Coulson up a little. “Hands and knees,” his Alpha says quietly.

Clint complies immediately, glad that his little show for Coulson is over. He ends up in the position that he’d started in, when he’d presented himself for Thor and Steve. Clint’s braced against the headboard, giving Coulson leverage. But before, Clint had chosen this position so that it would be easier for Thor and Steve to pretend that Clint was someone else. Coulson likes him on hands and knees to that he can fuck him and bite his neck at the same time. Clint likes that better.

He can hear Coulson taking off the rest of his clothes and fights the urge to turn around and look. Soon Coulson’s on the bed behind him, running his hands over Clint’s feet, up his tense thighs, over his ass, across his lower back and ribcage. Clint likes it when Coulson touches him.

When Coulson starts to fuck him, he almost cries. “You are so strong,” Coulson murmurs, sliding in so slowly Clint is worried he may actually lose his mind. “The most beautiful man I know. Taking my cock like you were made for it, because you were. You were made for exactly this.” Clint arches his back to make the angle better for Coulson and is rewarded by another inch sliding inside of him. He says something that was, initially, intended to be words; it dies in his mouth when Coulson scrapes his fingernails down Clint’s back.

“I never want to stop fucking you,” Coulson says; Clint can actually hear some strain in Coulson’s voice now. “Never want to let you out of my bed, out of my sight, want to—want to keep you—”

Clint clenches his jaw shut and screams, his hole convulsing, his cock spurting untouched as his cunt squirts around Coulson’s dick.

“You’re mine,” Coulson says, fucking him harder and talking to him louder; he knows what pushed Clint over the edge. “I will never give up on you, never leave you, never—” Something like a sob fights its way up from inside of Clint, making him shake in Coulson’s arms, making his surrender longer and more painful. “Jesus Christ,” Coulson gasps, reaching around Clint to stroke his oversensitive cock. “So good, perfect, beautiful—” Clint writhes obediently, angling for more of Coulson’s cock until his arms give out underneath him and he slumps forward onto the bed. He feels like his skeleton’s liquefied. He hadn’t felt this done after any of his orgasms with Thor and Steve, hadn’t felt anything but a slight relief and a sense of vague dissatisfaction.

Coulson doesn’t let him rest. He just grabs Clint’s hips and slams his cock in, the sound of his hips against Clint’s ass snapping through the room.

Clint bares his teeth in a tense smile and begs with his body, asking for more. Coulson fucks him and praises him and Clint closes his eyes and listens. Listens to Coulson’s words and thinks of Thor’s voice, saying something Clint hadn’t been able to understand; thinks of Steve’s graceful fingers tracing gentle lines over the architecture of Clint’s fucked-up body.

When Clint’s beginning to get hard a second time, Coulson grabs Clint’s hair and pulls him backward, his body arching in a bow. Clint smiles. He knows what happens next.

Coulson bites him.

Coulson bites him and it doesn’t feel dirty. Doesn’t feel shameful.

This is not a mark that he is going to want to hide.

Coulson bites him and everything else disappears. Clint feels at peace, feels like he’s floating, anchored only by Coulson’s renewed claim. He tilts his head to encourage Coulson to keep going; Coulson bites harder, until the skin breaks underneath his teeth. Clint can’t help the involuntary spasm that runs through his body, tugging at Coulson’s grip. The new pain builds and builds. The rest of his body comes back to him as each heartbeat brings Coulson’s claim further down his body.

He exists where Coulson is touching him, he is beautiful where Coulson claims him, and, as the seconds pass and Coulson pulls away so that he can call Clint beautiful and his, the spell that Thor had cast and Steve had drawn and Coulson has named tightens its hold on Clint.

“Good boy,” Coulson says, before he bites Clint a second time, working Clint’s cock until he comes again, finally dry, the painful orgasm wracking his body and wringing hoarse cries from his throat.

He’s dripping with their combined sweat and come, a bit of blood trickling down his neck. He takes a sharp breath through his nose. He thinks he might like the way he smells, when he smells like Coulson, too.

Coulson fucks him until he cannot move, can barely breathe, can only submit. When Coulson finally comes, the restless danger that had settled into Clint’s skin when he woke up alone and aching three days before disappears.

OUCH MY FEELS.Oh man oh man. This was wonderful. Also now I really want to read about everyone giving Clint hugs and helping him through his many issues about sex and also I have a very clear picture of Tony finding out about Clint's first heats and his time at the circus and just being dumbstruckhorrified and FEELS, I HAS THEM.

I love the way his unnecessary shame is so obvious to everyone but Clint, and I love the hints we get at what kind of omega Tony is. But I especially love the dialogue between Coulson and Clint - alternating from witty to HOT.

Please write more of this ‘verse! The characterization and backstory was sad but beautifully done and ended on a good note, and I'd love to read more, maybe what happens after this when things are calmer. Great fic!